Okay, so this is probably mostly opinion, but maybe not. In the drudge work I've self-assigned I'm finding lots of users are tagging their geolocation related questions as compass (lucene search utility). While this is probably due to haste, if we allow the auto-suggest to present a compass-geolocation option and remove the generic compass term, we may increase the validity of the tag and improve accuracy. Is it reasonable and appropriate to reassign those tags from the questions, or perhaps request a compass-geolocation tag get created and associate the location tag to those questions? FWIW, the questions are all relating to implementations of geolocation data for various mobile platforms, so there really does seem to be a niche for that tag, but the compass word is getting so overloaded that it's really impacting the usefulness of the tag meta data.

Since I constructed the above paragraph may by confusing, the two questions are:

If not, can someone create a new compass-geolocation tag, then I'll use it to group the questions that are not related to lucene search utility and leave the search questions under the old compass. This will at least stop watering down the current crop of compass questions and allow search on the location oriented questions as a distinct group.

Sorry given that I don't even know what lucene is, but I do know what a compass on a mobile is. I think you have to give up on saying the compass tag has anything do to with lucene. Common usage wins every day. (You can't expect a tag page to be read by anyone when the meaning of the tag is clearly given by basic English usage)
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Ian RingroseJul 26 '11 at 15:06

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I'm leaning towards three tags: compass-geolocation, compass-lucene and compass-css so that the poster can select the right one. When a tags common verbiage gets watered down it's probably time to make it more readily clear what is intended for this post.
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OldTrollJul 26 '11 at 15:12

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A benefit of using three specific tags is that everything using just compass will be mistagged by definition, making it easier to clean up.
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McCannotJul 26 '11 at 15:26

Is there anyone with sufficient mojo to perform CRUD upon the relevant tags? I think I have the miss-labelled compass-css tags cleared up and I'd be willing to start on the compass-geolocation or whatever tags. Then once that's done, we can shove the compass-lucene tag in place and do something nasty to the compass (general) tag. It's a plan, no?
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OldTrollJul 26 '11 at 15:29

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@OldTroll - Sometimes it just doesn't work. We have a similar problem for us old guys who used to program in assembly language. Suddenly some people believe assembly has something to do with .NET
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Bo PerssonJul 26 '11 at 22:55

@Bo Persson: True, but I'm not wanting to co-opt compass for some new technology, but branch and disambiguate the current usage. Clarity, not trendiness is the goal. Programmers would probably select assembly-.net over assembly-x86 or assembly-ppc if that were their interest.
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OldTrollJul 27 '11 at 0:53

@OldTroll: Sorry, but I disagree. If I've already tagged my question with [c#] and [.net], [assembly-.net] (in addition to being ugly) is just redundant. Tags like [assembly] do not have to be completely unambiguous. [compass] does in fact have meanings beyond [compass-lucene] and [compass-css], so it still needs to be a valid tag, but not co-opted by some specific technology.
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Robert HarveyJul 27 '11 at 15:11

@Robert Harvey: I guess I value accuracy more than beauty. Personally if I'm searching for things that are compass/search related and I find that my search is returning 50%+ of geolocation related queries AND then I check the tag descriptions only to discover I'm using the 'correct' search term, then I'm annoyed. I'm not advocating total accuracy via some overly anal editorial process, but currently the compass term is getting used more commonly for non-lucene uses. Which indicates (to me at least) a problem.
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OldTrollJul 27 '11 at 15:21

That's fine, but honestly tags that get too specific are a pain in the ass. A small amount of ambiguity is actually a good thing, and [assembly] is a perfect example of that. Remember, you can always combine tags for searches, i.e. [.net] [assembly] and [geolocation] [compass] or even [android] [compass].
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Robert HarveyJul 27 '11 at 15:22

My concern with the [compass-geolocation] tag is that it seems non-obvious. How would you know to use it as a search term, or that it is the "correct" tag for Android geolocation/compass questions? Both [compass] and [geolocation] seem like more natural tags to me.
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Robert HarveyJul 27 '11 at 15:58

I'm okay with just using [compass] for traditional compass questions, but if you type compass and get three options it seems like a easy option. If you're thinking compass-css and type compass and select it, then I'm stuck sifting through them again. If the only options are compass-* then you have to look and select.
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OldTrollJul 27 '11 at 16:12

I'm coming around to your way of thinking, but I still think [compass-geolocation] is a bit obtuse, and people will still use [compass], unless you synonymize it. Which usage is the most common?
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Robert HarveyJul 27 '11 at 16:20

Holy moly. Quick count of the "top" fifty returns on a search for [compass] returns only 11 results that are lucene. I'd say compass is drastically misused. I didn't go past the first page of results because I'm lazy (but honest). Still I'd say that's pretty strong indication that lucene may need to be relabelled as [compass-lucene] and [compass] redefined to indicate geolocation and orientation questions. I'm not familiar with synonymization, so I'm not certain how that would help or what it would do.
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OldTrollJul 27 '11 at 16:40

Once the [compass-lucene] and [compass-css] questions are all retagged, I can batch-retag the remaining [compass] questions as [compass-geolocation].
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Robert HarveyJul 27 '11 at 16:50

Can you let me know when the new tag(s) are available? (I didn't see compass-lucene when I looked a few seconds ago)
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OldTrollJul 27 '11 at 16:53

1 Answer
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I think compass shouldn't be reserved just for the Lucene-based project, honestly. There are indeed programming uses for compasses these days (especially in mobile devices) and to reserve a fairly broad topic for a much more niche product I think is kind of silly.

I'd say to retag all the Lucene stuff as lucene-compass (or perhaps compass-lucene to be consistent with compass-css) and then leave compass for actual questions having to do with compasses. Then note in the tag wiki for compass that there is a separate tag for questions having to do with the Lucene-based project. There's already a similar note in the wiki for the Compass CSS project and its related tag.

+1. Here's the start of my abandoned answer: They are not morons. Many mobiles devices actually contain a compass, and that tag seems appropriate to these questions, much like a Camera or a Microphone.
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KobiJul 26 '11 at 14:48

Thing is, how many people would use [compass] to mean actual compasses compared to the number of people who'll just toss [compass] on a question about the Lucene or CSS versions?
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McCannotJul 26 '11 at 15:04

I agree, but I'm thinking that it's going to take vigilance to keep thing in their correct places since the posters aren't noticing that there is a compass-css (which is mentioned in the compass tag info) for their css questions. Oh well, some things you just can't fix.
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OldTrollJul 26 '11 at 15:05

@McCannot hard to say, but when you start typing compass in the tag field and you see compass-lucene or compass-css in there instead, I'd wager most times you'd pick the specific one
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Daniel DiPaoloJul 26 '11 at 15:06

Really? My impression is that people will often just use the most general-purpose tag they can find, even when it doesn't really mean anything.
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McCannotJul 26 '11 at 15:17

@McCannot I have no hard data to back it up but intuitively you'd want to target your question better; but, some things you can't really fix and luckily Stack Exchange sites are collaboratively edited and moderated!
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Daniel DiPaoloJul 26 '11 at 15:19

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Well, why would people use tags like software, problem, help, or error? It's certainly not because they want to target their question better...
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McCannotJul 26 '11 at 15:25

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@McCannot yes, but in that case they're just using poor tags, not tags that are close to more-highly-targeted tags. If you type in compass and see either lucene-compass or compass-lucene (which the auto-complete system would display), but you still pass up the more specific tag, then you're just doing a poor job and no matter what tags are there will help you
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Daniel DiPaoloJul 26 '11 at 15:29

This ended up being pretty close to what we did, except that we added compass-geolocation and made compass a synonym for it. Compass is dead, long live compass!
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OldTrollJul 28 '11 at 0:04